People should act according to their best knowledge and conscience
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Helena Němcová, née Fraňková, was born on November 20, 1937. She lived with her sister and parents in the family villa in Zbraslav. In May 1945, they had to hide in the cellar. The whole family was badly affected by the communist coup in February 1948. The grandfather, who had a tinsmith workshop in Anděl and employed three people, was declared an exploiter, and his workshop was nationalized. The second grandfather lost his job as Senate President of the Supreme Administrative Court because the Communists abolished the administrative courts. The father, who as a judge of the district court in Zbraslav in the 1950s dared not to announce a pre-arranged sentence against a defendant in a political trial, had to go to the construction of the Bridge of Intelligence in Branice and in 1954 to Strakonice, where he died under unclear circumstances on the construction site. Helena Němcová was not allowed to study. After high school, she worked, for example, as an accountant at the Institute for Ore Research in Bráník or at the Regional Cultural Center of the Central Bohemian Region, and completed her university education remotely in the evenings. The occupation by the troops of the Warsaw Pact found her and her children in Litvínov with friends. In 1970, she signed a 2,000-word petition and refused to denounce her supervisor, which cost her her job. She wrote samizdat books, her husband published the anti-regime Young Front with others. She and her husband were repeatedly interrogated by the StB because of the falsified permission to go out to perform with the theater show Shanson. In November 1989, she participated in demonstrations on Národní třída and Letná. After the revolution, she worked as a secretary of the Zbraslav Municipal Office. Today, she lives in Zbraslav, writes songs for children, has published five books and has been involved in amateur theater all her life.
